


to gather the pieces

by bravinto



Category: The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Coping, Gen, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 22:45:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12220479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bravinto/pseuds/bravinto
Summary: It's a long, cold spring, shattered in fragments.Malcolm comes to check on all the Defenders after the events of the series





	to gather the pieces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Beguile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beguile/gifts).



> This is a bit on the shortish side, alas!

It's a long, cold spring, shattered in fragments.

 

The sign is up, the paper cover is down,  and the blue snowy light pours in distorted waves through the riffled glass into the corridor. Jessica's place is still sad and shabby looking,  but it's clean now, and the holes in the walls have been painted over.

She shuts her laptop and stands up.

“The game is afoot? “ Malcolm asks.

“A-dick. Another rich douchebag,” she rolls her eyes. “Listen, Malcolm…”

She breathes out loudly, a special sort of frustration that he know by now means “Jessica Jones has to betray some sort of caring emotion. Malcolm schools his expression into something hopefully indifferent.

“Listen, after all that’s happened, you see that this is a shitty, dangerous job. I thought… Trish knows how to defend herself; you don’t. If you wanna hang around, perhaps you should learn, too.”

 

Purpose hangs in the dojo, like a fish in the tank, suspended in the dull light with the motes of dust. Colleen is pale and serious, a little lost, but determined.

“No, you are holding your arm wrong. There,” she corrects his posture. “Try again. Again. Again. Yes, that’s better.”

The mats and wooden sticks and whatnot are hard and painful on his knuckles, but Colleen is a good teacher. Malcolm isn’t doing this for himself only, it is for Jessica and for Karen and Foggy, and for Colleen herself, and he’s willing to take it, for all of them. All of _us_.

“How’s Danny?” he asks, when they take a break, and she gives him water from a dispenser that looks way too expensive to be here.

She shoots a look towards the back room where the shadow of a rigid figure falls across the floor.

“Meditating,” Colleen says. “He’s had a long night.”

For a moment there’s something odd in her expression.

“Something’s up?” Malcolm asks.

“Ever since the Midland Circle thing he’s been… going out,” she says with an emphasis.

“You good with that?”

“It’s not my call to refuse,” she answers.

It’s too quick.

“Colleen,” Malcolm says. “It’s going to be okay.”

She believes him, at least a little bit, but he isn’t sure if he believes himself. He’ll need to check on the others.

 

Harlem is almost intact, barely touched by the disaster. The sun is still shining, and the day is warmer here than the rest of New York, it seems. The house smells of pastelitos and plaster, and just a touch of sex.

“How are you guys holding up?” Malcolm asks.

Luke gives him a shrewd but kind smile across the table. It’s strange how things have changed between them.

“We are coping,” Luke says, in that weird way of his that is both honest and evasive.

Claire nods. Something  in her has hardened over those months, but she didn’t break. To Malcolm it seems, she’s one of those people who can bend but won’t break, no matter what.

 

Hell’s Kitchen is quiet, in a ruined sort of way. Malcolm can’t raise Karen - or more like, can’t catch her at home or at work. He knows, though, that she comes to see Trish and that she chooses to bury herself in work, and that’s comforting enough.

Foggy Nelson, however…

Nelson is a different story. Malcolm pulls him out of the bottle one evening in April and drags him to his place. Jessica gives him a look when he packs Nelson into his studio and into his bed, but says nothing.

Foggy stays for three days, asleep for two of them. He won’t talk much about what happened, but Malcolm knows it’s not by choice. At the very least, his drinking spree ends, and he is well enough to go home.

 

Something happened back then that broke the surface of life, left a gaping hole in the middle of New York and all of their lives. Nobody really told him the whole truth about it, but Malcolm is no fool, he knows loss when he sees it. And he can’t really stitch it closed, but he can stand by and make sure nobody else falls off.


End file.
